Weddingbee Blog

“Yea! Time to party! Woo, hoo!

Oh, wait, what? Pictures, right. Well, okay, we’ll take pictures. But THEN WE’RE GONNA PARTY! Right? Can someone check the schedule? Right. Okay. Good. That’s definitely right.

Here we go. Um, what? Picture list? Yes, I did one. On my laptop. Which is upstairs… ooookay then, we’ll make it up as we go. Let me think. Man, I wish we had booze down here. I need a drink.

Girls first. Smile pretty!

Okay, now the girls with the mister. I think I saw something like this on a blog once. {Note they all have the good sense to look slightly embarrassed.}
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Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following after you, For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord do with me and more if anything but death parts you from me.

-Ruth 1:16

My grandfather died around this time last year, and I was fortunate enough to be there and be given the opportunity to speak at his funeral. While I was drafting my notes, I got to thinking about what I was looking for in a relationship, and I finally realized that it was in front of me my whole life.

Photo from my personal collection

That man would be a lot like my grandpa: loyal and devoted, honest and direct, and a silly smart ass. He was always willing to lighten the mood with a joke or a funny face, and he told it like it was and when the rubber hit the road, he was there. My husband is all of that.

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Hi. I’m Cheese and I once blogged here. And, much like many of my blogging buddies, I am now apologizing for dropping my once-breakneck recap frequency.

Frankly, I’m not sure what happened, though I think it’s a combination of factors. First, I have no idea how to write about something as personal as a ceremony and still make it interesting to people who aren’t me. That’s closer to the truth than it first seems: I wrote our ceremony with myself in mind and it was a bit too long and too rushed for everyone else, but I don’t care.

See, I struggle in this relationship thing. (Cue the laughing at such an obvious understatement.) And I know myself well enough to know that I will need words of wisdom and support and guidance to get me through the low times. So, I wrote our ceremony with that goal in mind: to get me through the rough times by reminding me why I was married, what being married meant, and what to do next. Literally.

My husband is not a words person; he’s more of an actions guy. We both knew that our ceremony wording mattered more to me than to anyone else, which gave me permission to be selfish. I am not good at selfish, but I’m glad I was.

Since then, we’ve had a few fights (more laughing at the inevitability of this fact), and I’ve thought of our ceremony, and of our vows, and of the faith our people have in us that we can make this work. I’ve remembered that we are bound together through rough times, we are supposed to ask for help, and we are guided through it all by our God and our people. See? It worked!

And finally, you all have been such sweethearts about my previous recaps that I’m feeling the pressure of writing something great. Our ceremony wasn’t nearly as emotional as the morning before or as funny as the reception afterward.

It was perfect, though. So, with your expectations hopefully lowered, I’ll go ahead and get this part recapped.
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I was nervous. Oh, so nervous.

After my hair was done,

my makeup was on,
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Up until a few years ago, I’d never really been a fan of women. Frankly, they scared me. A few bad break-ups (the friendship kind) in high school and college, a few intimidating (or, let’s be honest, silly) girlfriends of good male friends, a few too many snarky comments – I was done. I had a few male friends and my mom. That was it.

And then, at a very low point in my life, I met L. She was my vet, actually, one of many vets I’d had in my life, but for some reason, meeting her changed my life. She was so funny and smart and sweet, and for just a second, I wondered what it would be like to be friends with her.

And then I was.

Since those days, more than two years ago, she’s moved on to bigger cities and better dreams, and I miss her all the time. But she boarded a flight and bought a dress and traveled all the way across the country for little ol’ me. And I needed her.

Because she, too, laughs with her whole body.

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I’m a jealous person. I know, I know, not the most flattering of personality traits, but since honesty is one of the better of those, I may as well admit it.

I went to a wedding just two weeks after ours, and though it was surprisingly just like ours (funny what they say about imitation), I was a bit jealous. That couple did very little of their own planning, and I thought about how nice it would be to just walk into a well-planned wedding.

I saw the lovely Mrs. Meatball’s pics and I was OH, so very jealous. She looks like the cutest and happiest freaking fairy (I say that with love!) and I wanted to be just like her. Just like that. Exactly like that.

But then I got a sneak peek at a few of our pictures and I remembered: Oh, THAT’S who I am. I’m the loud mouth who laughs with her whole body.

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Hey, all. Remember me? I was the one who blogged about Twister and going to Brazil. And then y’all gave me your input on photo books because you’re so sweet. {And then I might have fallen on the face of the blog-earth because I haven’t gotten my recaps together. Yup, that’s me.}

I just downloaded the software from MyPublisher and those lovely folks sent me a promo code good for a free book. Yup, just for giving them my email address.

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Fabulous photography rocks.

All photos by Angela Herzog Photography

Too much great photography, though? Makes my stomach hurt.

We started with more than a thousand images which I narrowed to 120 of my favorites. After editing, I had 408 really great photos. Really. I love them with all my heart.

Um, but now what? I don’t know what to do next. And trying to figure that out is making me breathe funny and feel hot and overwhelmed.
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Have I ever told you how we found our photographer? No? Well, here goes…

Not long after we were engaged, I found an old box of photos from earlier times in my life (which is a euphemism for my first wedding/ marriage, because I’ve decided it’s time to stop talking about it so much now that the chapter is finally, blessedly, peacefully closed). My fiance found me sitting on the floor in tears while I struggled to deal with the rush of memories taking over my heart.

Until that point, I didn’t care much about photography, figuring the best experiences were meant to be enjoyed, not captured, and the best memories would always be in my head. But then I found a picture of my now-deceased grandparents dancing. And I remembered the long-forgotten drama that raged around our choice of centerpieces; saw myself in all of my youthful naiveté; found my favorite picture of my favorite kid. I realized that someday I’d want to share my story – the whole story – with my children, and I’d want to show them these pictures as evidence of the life I lived before I met their father.

With newfound appreciation for the merits of photography, I set about finding a photographer stumbled upon a listing for a photographer on Craigslist. She was looking to expand her portfolio and so offered reduced sitting fees (of course that caught my attention, don’t you know me well enough to know that yet?). I was looking for an inexpensive way to remedy the fact that my beloved and I had perhaps one good (non-goofy) picture of us both.

When I jumped over to her website, I was stunned.

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I have this little joke going in my head, a joke that started way back when the first reader called me out on not posting pics, and continued when it was pointed out that I wasn’t doing any wedding planning, or DIYing anything, or really doing much except talk about my relationship with my fiance.

The joke is that I could totally be a faker, acting as if I was getting married but secretly a teenager with no hopes of dating or a retired teacher with free time on her hands. Okay, so that sounds more creepy than funny, but it still makes me laugh.

I’m not, though, and I have proof, courtesy of my fabulous photographer Angela:

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In preparation for our hometown reception over the fourth of July weekend, I’m checking out options for printing a good quality but reasonably priced photo book… or five.

source

I’ve picked through a thousand SOOC (straight out of camera, for those of you who don’t follow Mrs. Avocado’s blog) photos and chosen about a hundred favorites, and our photographer is editing them as we speak. I want to put together a wedding scrapbook for our peeps who couldn’t make it to the actual shindig to peruse, plus a couple of keepsake albums for each of our parents, all in less than a few weeks’ time.
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{And before you ask, yes, I promise I will post pictures — real pictures! — of our wedding just as soon as I have some and get my mind around how I want to tell the story. Really. I’m not planning to accidentally forget to give you proof that we did indeed have a wedding in spite of my procrastination and general unwillingness to do anything ahead of time. Pinky swear.}

So, along with the name-changing party going on around here (I’m trying to put a happy spin on it), we’re also buried under a mountain of post-wedding paperwork. Rather, I’m buried, since we long ago agreed that I’m the Paperwork Doing part of this couple and he’s the Dealing with Plumbing part. Fair, I think, though I still reserve the right to be resentful sometimes.

Whether or not you change your name, there are records to share, beneficiaries to update, and insurance policies to adjust. We all know that I’m no bastion of organization, but I don’t have to be. Trent over at The Simple Dollar has an astoundingly comprehensive Information Disaster Plan. Build the plan and you’ll soon discover what needs to be done post-wedding.
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Argh. You might recall that I bought two wedding dresses and way back when, y’all helped me decide which one to wear to our wedding. It was perfect. I loved, loved, loved it, and was secretly looking forward to wearing it again at our hometown reception. I mean, who doesn’t want a second shot at wearing a dress that makes their waist look tiny, tush look proportionate, and keeps the boobage under control? Plus, the bustle swished around my legs like frothy water. I felt like Ursula the Sea Witch, but in a good way.

Happy sigh.

However, our hometown reception is in Southern New Mexico near the height of summer — July 4th weekend. Aside from the fact that my beloved dress is way too much for a casual reception, it’ll be WAY too hot to trudge around in it for a whole evening.

I have to find another dress. You all gave Miss Mary Jane such great suggestions that I thought I’d ask you for help as well. Here’s the catch: I’m short (5 foot) and busty (30F), and our reception is in about three weeks. I’d love something as equally sassy as my wedding dress. A short dress would be nice and cool, but (much like a six year old) my legs are perpetually covered in bug bites and scratches, so maybe a long dress would be better.
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No, I haven’t yet straightened out the DMV situation. That’s a story for another day, hopefully when it’s actually straightened out (I just love a happy ending, ya know?).

No, this post is about how name changing affects your life in much more insidious and PITA ways: email accounts and blogs. I posted a while back that I reserved a new Gmail account in my new name. Seemed like the right thing to do, since my current personal email account includes my maiden name.

I HAD NO IDEA HOW MANY PLACES THAT PESKY LITTLE EMAIL ACCOUNT WAS USED. Seriously. Bank logins, insurance accounts, benefits websites, online magazines… and blogs. Oh, the blogs.

See, you can’t switch the primary email address on a Google account. Say what? Yes, let me repeat: you cannot change the primary email address on a Google account if that email address is a Gmail address.

Editing Your Account: Username

You can’t change the email address on your account to an existing Gmail address, but we invite you to add a new Gmail address to your Google Account.

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Here I am again with one of those untouchable wedding topics: regrets. I get it, really I do. You don’t want to “shake the glitter off” (as was commented on my last post) and you don’t want to pay any attention to things you can’t rectify or get right the next time (because as of right now, I am never. going. through. that. again. Ever).

On the other hand, I’ve yet to meet a newly-minted wife (just-graduated bride? What do we call ourselves now?) that doesn’t have regrets. Like doubts, regrets are one of those shared experiences that we never share. So I will share them, as they occur to me, more to scare them away with the light of honesty than anything else.

• I wish I had done more of the little touches ahead of time. By the time our wedding weekend rolled around, we were in full prioritization-by-fire mode, so little things got rushed. I wrote thank you notes to my bridesmaids while getting my hair done. I printed goofy little matchbook cards (”Come on baby, Light my fire”) and tags for the potted geraniums (”Take me home tonight/ I don’t want to let you go til you see the light/ Love, geranium”) at 2 AM0. I handed over token gifts without wrapping them. It seemed like a small thing beforehand – nobody’s going to love me less because I didn’t wrap their gifts – but overwhelmed with gratitude for the people who showed up early and stayed late, cleaned the bathroom and picked up any stray dog poos, I fervently wished that I’d put as much love into thanking them as they did into helping me.

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